Australia and the UK were the first to introduce age restrictions that add fuel to the fire of mass surveillance. Now, American laws could inspire European politicians to broaden the scope of age verification this side of the ocean, finds Oliver Laas.
Legislators have introduced age restrictions on many websites and applications in different parts of the world. Many are now looking to follow suit, including the European Union.
What this means in practice is age verification in applications or websites. To pass, users will have to share their personal data — IDs, credit card numbers or pictures of themselves — with third parties who use these to determine the user’s age. The first data leaks have already happened.
The state of California has passed a law that obligates operating system creators to verify the age of users. This entails asking for the user’s age when they register an account to then be able to share the user’s age bracket with applications and websites.
Similar bills are in the works in Colorado and New York. In Brazil, a comparable law will enter into force on March 17.
Author: Oliver Laas, junior lecturer of philosophy at Tallinn University
Read more: ERR.EE
